How to Drive More Website Traffic

How to Drive More Website Traffic

How to Drive More Website Traffic

October 28, 2017Madeleine Helme

What’s a website without traffic? It’s pretty much a journal for you to collect your thoughts, ideas, and other kinds of content that no one else will see. My guess is that this was not your intention when you invested in building a website. No, you want traffic. Lots and lots of high-quality traffic.

Increasing traffic to your website can be a real challenge. In fact, it is one of the most commonly cited challenges faced by online businesses. It’s time to change that! You’ve got enough on your plate as a business owner without having to worry about a deserted website.

Read on to find out the most effective ways for driving high-quality traffic to your website.

Blogging

Blogging can help your traffic in multiple ways. If people aren’t visiting your site, give them a reason to! Fill your website with content that’s really valuable to your target audience. Content that is useful and engaging. Then, share your blogs as much as possible so that people know it’s there. This will drive them to your website to read your blogs.

Blogging also helps to improve your SEO. Google loves websites that are updated with quality content on a regular basis. This shows them that your site is one they should recommend to users when they search. Your website traffic will benefit hugely from being more discoverable through search engines.

Guest blogging

On top of blogging on your own website, contributing blogs to other websites is another great practice. Find relevant websites that accept blogs from guest contributors and get in touch with them. Do some research before you propose or write a guest blog. Find out what kind of content their audience likes, what tone of voice the site’s blogs are written in, and what format they use.

This will help you to get quality backlinks to your website, which is great for SEO as well. It will also help to raise awareness of your brand and its website, getting more people to visit you online. Plus, if the website you contribute to shares your blog on social media, this will expose your brand to an even wider audience.

Social media

Speaking of social media, you need to be on it yourself to help direct quality traffic to your website. Make sure your website URL is in your bio on whichever social media platform you use. Plus, you can post links to your site and blog to get more people clicking – just make sure it’s not too promotional.

Post quality content on a regular basis to build a following on that platform. It’s also important to engage with other users and get involved in conversations. Discover the key influencers on social media in your field and follow and engage with them.

If you mention anyone like this in one of your blogs (if you link to an article of theirs, for example), then be sure to give them a shoutout on social media. Tweet a link to your blog with their @ handle. If they retweet, then that could be big exposure for your website.

Online advertising

A more direct way to increase traffic to your website is through digital advertising. Display ads, search ads, and social ads are popular forms of online advertising. If you have the budget for it, then advertising online can be a big boost to your website traffic. Targeting options mean that you can show your ads to a specific audience, meaning you can target the high-quality traffic that you want.

On-site SEO

A lot of the ideas mentioned here contribute to your website’s performance on search engines, but this point focuses solely on the search factors on your website. Optimizing your site for search is so important for driving more traffic to your website. Here are a few factors you should be aware of:

Keywords – The experts advise against keyword stuffing these days, but you should still think about the keywords and phrases that people might use to look for you. Try to incorporate these naturally in your website content and blog posts.

Title tags – The title tag is the first line that appears in a search listing for a webpage. It should make it clear to the reader what the page is about. An unclear title won’t make people want to click on the search result.

URL – Like the title tag, the subject of the page should also be clear in the URL. This is good for keywords as well as clarity.

Alt tags – An alt tag is assigned to an image and is the text that is displayed when an image cannot load. This is good for accessibility and is also scanned by Google’s bots, providing another indicator of the subject of the page.

Link-building

I’ve mentioned backlinks a couple of times already via blogging and social media. Why is building these backlinks so important? They are basically another way of showing Google that your website is worth suggesting to their users. If a lot of high quality, authoritative sites are sharing links to your content, then it must be worth sharing.

So, the more backlinks you can earn, the better you will look in Google’s eyes. Plus, if links to your website are being shared all over the internet, then more people are going to see them and (hopefully!) click to view your website.

A lot of these techniques feed into each other, so it shouldn’t be difficult to start working on several of them. Write a blog, share it on social media, earn lots of backlinks! Naturally building your website traffic takes time, so stay patient and keep doing what you’re doing!

Madeleine Helme

After working in marketing for two years I decided to become a freelance writer. In my spare time I enjoy watching films and television and keeping fit through going to the gym and practising taekwondo.